ALASKA. ONE AMAZING TURNING POINT

In December 2018, we set out to sea from Fort Lauderdale toward the Caribbean for what seemed at first like a regular winter season cruising the island chain between Puerto Rico and Grenada.  Only this time we were on a mission.  And that mission was to make it to Alaska and back in one continuous cruising season. For the first 2 months we cruised the regular suspects, which ended our Caribbean run in Curacao.  From there, after a lengthy weather-window wait, we trundled through the Panama Canal and on to Costa Rica.  The adventures there were awesome, but I’ll save that for a separate article.  Fast forward to July, and our Alaska adventure began in Ketchikan, just north of the US border and the southern end of Tongass National Forest.We had exactly a month to see as much as we could, so we planned each day meticulously in advance.  This was my first time cruising in Alaska, so planning kept me on my toes for months as we headed toward Alaska while enjoying all that the west coast of the USA and BC, Canada, have to offer. My photography bucket list top 3 were bubble feeding humpback whales, a brown bear eating a salmon, and a calving glacier.  Shocker!   With persistence and a bit of luck, I achieved all 3, and many more magical moments that I hadn’t anticipated. In the 3^rd week of the Alaskan leg, we awoke at Bartlett Cove, at the entrance to Glacier Bay National Park.  The previous day we anchored out front of the ranger station where we had to attend a compulsory training session on how to conduct ourselves within the park boundary.  There was a 4-night maximum, so we planned to see as much as possible within the allotted time, which we had to book exactly 60 days in advance to secure a spot for one of the 25 vessels allowed in at a time. With Margerie Glacier being my prime objective, we anchored just to the south the night before so we could take our time cruising up and back John Hopkins Inlet and Tarr Inlet and spend some time at the glacier itself.  After checking the yacht's insurance policy, it gave a latitudinal limit of 59 degrees North.  The Glacier itself was at 59.03.00N, 3 miles north of our insurance limit.   So I sat down with the yacht's owner and said something along the lines of “Look, we have come all this way.  After today we start the very long cruise back.  From what I hear, this is the highlight of the whole thing, but we won’t be insured for about 3 hours, and the water up there is filled with icebergs.  How about it?  It’s your call.”   Of course he agreed, and off we went into the chasm.An eerie silence descends, interrupted by the echoing cracks of the glacier as it edges toward you at about 6 feet per day.  A living, breathing giant depositing back to the sea the ice that started as snowfall miles away 200 years earlier.  The cycle never stops, and the resulting calving makes for some spectacular visuals and a few rolly waves when the bigger falls create waves of varying sizes.   Something I was very wary of as Captain. A little over 10,000 nautical miles and 9 months after we left Florida, I  made the call to the guests and crew, let off a quick blast of the horn, and “chucked a u-ey,” as we say in Australia, and started the long trek back to Fort Lauderdale.